Hell’s Chronicles

There was no warning this time. There was only one person in the department who had any idea of what had just occurred. Ramona Gutierrez had been there back in ‘95. She had seen this before. She also had been with the Bureau long enough to know that this would not be your father’s government shutdown. No indeed, this would be the crueler, rougher version born of nigh on a quarter century of partisan bickering. Some of them were about to reap the whirlwind.

There had been no flashing lights, no klaxons or siren’s wail, simply the smooth, almost clinical, switch of the locks on the doors. A soothing, synthesized female voice came up low, simultaneously on every computer, tablet or phone equipped to receive. She announced herself as Nancy, appearing only as a pair of heavily greased lips, smoldering under the mushy cake of the blazing red paste upon the screen. As she whispered the hum of motors rumbled from somewhere beneath the floor and the dull, slow to awaken team present in the department began to take notice that a stainless steel sheathing had suddenly risen about the room to seal them off from the outside world. Only one thought entered Ramona’s head: this shit gonna be bad!

Nancy droned on from every speaker still active in the room. “ Your department has been sequestered and will be held in a state of suspension until further notice. This is part of the consequence for this draconian Trump government shutdown, but know this, my brothers and sisters of FECAL (Federal Employees, Contractors And Layabouts): you will not be forgotten! We will fight on for you here, from the outside, we will carry on the resistance until we are back…..er, I mean, uh…until the government is reopened. This should not take more than 96 hours, during which time we ask that you remain calm and shelter in place.”

The advisory had been set in a perpetual loop. After about ten renditions the audio within the office faded as one device after another was eventually muted. Ramona surveyed the room, noting the shell-shocked expressions on every face present. She could tell the reality of their situation had not yet been fully absorbed. It was vital that she was assertive now, at the outset, to insure order.

“All right people! Let’s look sharp now! I was here back in ‘95 and ‘96. They had over a million of us on furlough. Twenty-seven days. We all made it back then and we’ll make it this time. Now just stay at your desks and try to remain busy. It’s just like any other day.”

Most of them were still just kids. Starry eyed youth with the milk from the teat of their institution of higher learning still wet upon their lips. These were the Obama years additions, the flood of youth which flocked back to celebrate government being “cool” again. Obama said so. And all the networks. Really aaanybody of any importance. They were woefully ill equipped for the hand to hand combat that sometimes erupted in Washington. Whether she wanted it or not Ramona was going to be their den mother/ drill sergeant for the foreseeable future. She observed that she had quieted their discomfiture for the moment, but the inevitable questions hovered on their lips.

“When will it be over?” “Are we still gonna get paid?” “Will we get home for Christmas?” All predictable, of course, and only answerable as I don’t know, yes and maybe. It’s only when you’re on the receiving end of government that it ever says no. Yes we can. This was their creed. What should become of these poor souls if it went on? How long before cannibalism reared it’s ugly head? Ramona had a bottle of Grey Goose and half a scrip of Vicodin in her desk should the unthinkable arise.

Christmas came and went. As did New Years. There were a few tense moments, but mostly just tears. And disbelief. “Doesn’t that madman realize what he is doing?” “If I wanted this I would have joined the army!” “This is so unfair!” Ramona had the sense that these youngsters were drawing perilously close to disillusion, upon the heels of which would soon follow despair and ultimately desperation. They were just there, at the cusp. There was but one glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel. Nancy would take the gavel of the House and the Democrat cavalry would ride into the new congress to deliver them from this plebeian revolt. When would these mouth breathers realize that government is best left in the hands of the professionals? It might take them just a few more days, but then they would be freed. Surely by Friday? Ramona kept telling herself that she only needed to hold this band of untested but erstwhile civil servants together for two more days.

For the entire week following Christmas the office had descended into a sullen fugue. They had grown listless, no longer obsessively checking their phones for updates. The droning murmur of Nancy’s voice over multiple speakers was muted now, replaced by the happy chirps and gongs of various apps such as Candy Crush and other senseless amusements. These subtle notes were a stark contrast to the somber and crestfallen expressions worn. Their lot surely could have been worse. There was still light and heat, though no truly comfortable place to sleep. Phone calls could neither be made nor received, likewise texts, yet the internet connection remained. They had discovered that they could “see out”, as it were, but could not be seen or heard. The news reports were anything but encouraging. There was one saving grace for them which came from the most unlikely of benefactors. It seems that buried deep within the last spending bill passed by the Republican controlled congress there had been a provision made for the installation of a space station grade, vacuum sealed food delivery system. It was designed for precisely such an occasion, their own work pod serving as the pilot program. All they were able to get was Dominos and Jimmy Johns, but it beat cannibalism.

In the early hours of 3 January details of Democrat congressional strategy began to unfold. Ramona understood that it might still require a few more days for these plans to be realized, but that glimmer of hope suddenly brightened. First, Nancywas allowing the House to approve an increase in the nation’s borrowing limit without an actual vote, instead having it deemed approved each time the House approves its annual budget resolution. Well, that made perfect sense to Ramona! Now that is how government is supposed to work, damn it! It was time to show these Trumpsters once for all how things are done in this town! She also reviewed several sources which began to suggest that members of the Trump team were leaking details in order to prepare a capitulation, slow walking the rhetoric back from the precipice. At one in the afternoon Ramona called her team together.

“Alright people…I need everybody to listen up. As of right now it looks like this thing will be over soon. Nancy is resuming her speakership today, as I’m sure you all know. Now the actual details of a final spending bill are far from resolved, but Madame Speaker has found a path out from this evil shutdown. She has announced that the House approves any increase in the debt ceiling without an actual vote. This designates any spending as approved via the authority in the annual budget resolution.”

Ramona paused at this point to allow the news to sink in. She quickly surveyed the faces about the room to gauge their level of comprehension. In most of their faces there was only the dimmest glow of recognition. They were shell-shocked, unable to process the information as they might normally have done. There was Sanders, the ditzy blonde and youngest of their party. She would wrestle with even the most simple dispatch under the best of circumstances. Then there was Goldberg, that snarky prick from Brooklyn. He had his weasel face all screwed up like he had a mouthful of bad meat. She tried to ignore him and continued to scan the room for reactions. Ramona had to start considering that perhaps her team was further gone than she had suspected. There was numb and, in the case of Sanders, confused. And Goldberg. Damn that little prick!

“Mr. Goldberg, did you have a question? Or a comment?”

“I’m working on it Ms. Gutierrez. There is something that you said that troubles me…”

“Well Mr. Goldberg I will be happy to try and explain. You should also remember that this is only a small piece of the puzzle. There is a lot of information we still do not have.”

“Oh I understand that Ms. Gutierrez. It’s just that…well, I don’t want to be that guy, but…”

Ramona bit her tongue and thought “Oh, but you are that guy, Mr. Goldberg!”. “What exactly was it that you’re having difficulty with?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but a government shutdown, even just a partial one like this…. Doesn’t that mean that the departments are just not funded?”

“Well, yes, that is essentially true.”

“Okay. So if the debt ceiling is raised automatically, without a vote, based on the existing or last budget resolution then there is no way to run out of money. Ergo, there can be no shutdown. Right? I mean that’s just logic, isn’t it?”

Ramona was momentarily nonplussed; he was correct, of course, but then wasn’t that essentially just what Madame Speaker was saying? Thankfully her training kicked in just in time and she responded with the be all and end all answer to every problem under the sun. “Mr. Goldberg that is exactly what Madame Speaker has said. Of course it is logic, but we are dealing with Trump and his minions. These people do not understand logic and therefore we have had a shutdown.”

“Yes, but if Madame Speaker is right then the shutdown, the one that could not happen, is over. But we’re still here.”

Ramona had just drawn a breath to respond when the power went out. The room began to vibrate, very subtly at first, and then harder, faster. The exterior sheathing surrounding their office began to glow, the light slowly pulsating through the windows. The vibrations rapidly advanced to a violent rocking, finding an axis upon which the office began to rotate in a counterclockwise spin. All of this occurred within a very short span of time, yet to Ramona it all appeared as in slow motion. The faces which only moments before had been blank and listless now showed utter panic and disbelief. Except for Goldberg, that smug little prick. He was smiling and his eyes gleamed in a mocking “I told you so”.

The office had begun to generate it’s own gravitational plane and Ramona found herself floating several feet off of the floor. She did not feel like she was floating, but she quite unmistakably was. Still experiencing in slow motion her mouth fell agape as she viewed her team, one by one, slowly disintegrate like Star Trek characters on teleporter platforms. The room was rotating around her, faster and faster until the last sight of her staff was that mocking grin of Goldberg, like the Cheshire Cat. Then everything went completely dark. She felt herself very slowly descend back to the floor and all was still. With her feet returned to solid ground Ramona stood trembling in the darkness. She believed she was dead and began to wonder what might happen next. Wasn’t there supposed to be some kind of light?

As though some unseen theater manager had read her thoughts a spotlight erupted from someplace in the void. The light settled upon a grand piano at which sat the Devil himself. “Hello, Ramona. Come on over here and sit down with me.”

Now she was sure she was dead, momentarily incredulous at the idea of going to hell. She thought “I never voted republican in my life! What the hell am I doing here!?” She gulped and somehow mustered enough courage to ask, “ Are you the….”

“The what? The Devil? Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan….yes, I am any and/or all of the above.”

“So….I’m in… hell?”

“Mmm…” the Devil began to tap out something on the keys and then continued. “Well Ramona, that one is rather hard to explain. Right now, here where we sit Ramona, is not actually physical hell itself. More of a, oh what’s the word I want here…. sort of a long hallway to hell. We’re in an inter-dimensional portal triggered by a paradox.” The Devil paused here to allow this to sink in as he continued to plink away at the ivories, trying to recall a piece by Debussy.

“So am I dead?”

“No.”

“I’m not dead…..well what the fuck?”

“Paradox, darling. You’re neither dead nor alive.”

“Paradox!? What paradox? What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Goldberg. Don’t you remember Ramona? Ha-ha-ha….oh, isn’t that always the way? Always some fucking Jew to gum up the works.”

Now she wasn’t so sure to trust what she saw and heard. She must be dreaming. Goldberg. What was it about Goldberg? It seemed that it had been only moments before yet she could not recall anything but that fading Cheshire Cat grin.

“Don’t think too hard on it my dear. This is where we are and frankly that’s the only reason I’m here. If you had actually won a lifetime of eternal damnation my chief of staff or my HR person would be handling this, but you are a special case. This isn’t actually hell, but it’s still hell’s jurisdiction. Kind of like the Danes and Greenland: we’re in charge but nobody wants to be there anyway.”

“But what about the rest of them?”

“I shouldn’t worry about that. Goldberg, of course….straight to hell, but the rest of them? They’ve just landed in another hallway. I’ll get to them later. See this happens at least once with every government shutdown, but we always get it sorted out eventually.”

“Okay, so what happens next?”

“Well Ramona I am so glad you asked that question because, you see, that is entirely up to you. I must confess that I have an ulterior motive here. You may have some talents that we can use.”

“In hell?”

“No, at the Rosedale Library! Of course in hell!”

“Now wait…..oh, I don’t know. This is some bad shit right here!”

“Don’t be so hasty Ramona, hear me out.” The Devil ceased his play at the piano and lit a cigarette, then offered one to Ramona.

“How’d you know I smoked?”

“Oh please! I know everything there is to know about you Ramona. Here, go ahead and have one. You know there are no smoking restrictions in hell? Just sayin’…..anyway, why don’t you take a little walk with me down this hallway?”

Ramona grudgingly took the cigarette, but apprehension leaped upon her face at the suggestion of walking with him. “ I don’t know……I, uh….”

“Ramona? It’s not as if you have a choice. You’ve nothing to fear. We’ll just walk a short way, I’ll explain my proposition and then I have something else to show you.”

Finally Ramona understood that she was not dreaming and that no matter how bizarre all of this seemed, it was in fact happening. And he was right: she really didn’t have any other options. They began to step into the darkness, their footfalls echoing long into the void. There was nothing to be seen beyond a glow of red light which emanated from the Devil, lighting their way just a few feet at a time. As they walked the Devil began to recite what sounded very much like an official, HR department approved job description for a federal senior management position. Like any federal form it went on at some great length without really saying very much of anything. She considered for a moment that perhaps he was trying to bore her to death. She had no perception of what distance they may have traveled and in every direction beyond their immediate orb of light there was nothing but darkness.

The Devil concluded the official “form” job description and then came to a stop.

“Now, Ramona, you have an idea of what sort of work would be entailed in this position. It’s certainly well within your experience. Twenty-seven years employed with the federal government and you have failed to create one tangible thing but mounds of files. Here the expectations are no higher and you get the added benefit of no smoking restrictions and never having to worry about another shutdown.”

“Okay, I’m listening. So what exactly is this department?”

“Alright Ramona, here’s the part where I need to show you something. Hold on, just a minute here…” The Devil reached out with one long, scaly talon to touch the surface of a roughly carved obsidian wall. After a few moments the wall began to glow, first orange, then red until finally reaching a blinding whiteness before dimming into a rosy translucence. It seemed to form some sort of screen or viewing window, though it was still shrouded in some sort of fog. “This will take a few minutes to clear so you can see for yourself, but let me give you a little background on this department. You see way back at the beginning when God and I were sorting out this whole “reality” thing we had to reach certain compromises. Here’s one I’m sure you know: God decides the female of your species has to bleed five to eight days a month for most of their lives and then deal with menopause. I say okay fine, Mr. God, so in return they get the multiple orgasm. There, you see how that works? You’re welcome, by the way.”

The window remained shrouded in swirling mists, but they were beginning to thin in some spots. As the Devil went on speaking Ramona was able to peer into the window and start to make out vague shapes. Wood and wire and occasionally some movement, also vague and unshaped.

“So that’s pretty much how the whole thing was mapped out. Give and take, all the way. So we get down into some of the lower orders of beings and God gets off into this weird tangent, you know. I mean the capybara? Come on! So on a goof I take his original design for the beaver, do a little genetic engineering and? Voila, I give you the duck-billed platypus! Ha-ha-ha….you should have seen the look on his face.”

Ramona continued to peer, more intently now, through the window. The images still came only in glimpses, no whole shapes taking form, but the scurry of movement in shadow. She also began to sense a great cloud of malice, an almost palpable hostility coming from behind that wall. Still gazing into it she responded to the Devil. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Ha-ha-ha…. Well, you know Ramona! Like I said, give and take. So, in a fit of pique God says okay fine, asshole! You now get to take all of the beavers in hell for all of eternity.”

Now the image cleared and Ramona could see a cavernous hall with row upon row of cages, stacked as tall as a man and for as far as they eye could see. In each and every one of those cages were beaver, fanged and foaming at the mouth, their eyes glowing red. And crews of workmen everywhere, administering repairs to the cages from the unrelenting assault of the beavers. In the distance there were some movements among some of those crews which suggested that they may have been set upon by some of the demonic rodents roaming free. Not anything that one could see in detail, only the suggestion of a massacre. As she took in this surreal landscape the Devil continued.

“As you can see the beavers are still really pissed off over this. Can’t say I blame them, you know, but hey? I’m the Devil, right? I’m afraid that I have only made it worse, though. I kept listening to your environmentalists and I actually believed that you assholes had finally killed them all off, or close to it. So, I lightened up on the department’s labor budget. It’s really starting to get out of hand down there, as you can see. That is why I would like to offer you hell’s Secretary of the Bureau of Angry Beavers. Huh? Whaddya say Ramona? I mean it’s either this or you can go back to work for the Trump administration.”

Ramona turned directly to the Devil, looked him straight in the eye and replied, “Where do I sign?”

Ernie had just returned from a well deserved vacation, exercising his twice annual visiting privileges to the over world. Key West, of course, with a small ship. His wizened face was burnished from the kiss of the tropic sun; the thin white lines of his aviator’s frames left marks upon his temples that resembled a string about his head. Like the elastic band of cheap plastic Halloween masks.

He had found himself in the classical predicament with vacation days: use them or lose them. With the looming Bank Holidays in the UK, followed on by several hundreds of thousands of young people entering or returning to college campus, Hell Inc. was headed for one of it’s busier seasons. With the recent addition of Sam Kinison as HR Director the efficiency of the entire operation had been markedly improved. There had been no better opportunity to get away, especially considering that this year their miseries were compounded by the addition of US midterm elections.

Rather than taking the express elevator down to central administration he decided to breeze by the cavernous intake center as an opportunity to make a casual inspection of the new and improved operation. Keeping to the dark shadows on the periphery Ernie was able to navigate to the vacuum tube that had been installed directly to an auxiliary exhaust shaft. This had been Kinison’s solution to weeding out the undesirables and though he had harbored some reservations as to how efficacious this might ultimately prove, his observations thus far seemed to affirm that indeed it was an improvement.

The screeching harangue that was employed as part of that process echoed down to where he was standing, beneath the tube about halfway between the entrance to intake and it’s terminus into the base of the onyx monolith standing watch over the chamber. Though unable to view inside of the tube it was apparent that it was operating at full capacity. There was a steady succession of tumbling, like tennis shoes in a dryer, accompanied by the whooshing vacuum. He was in no rush to return to the office and decided to wander up to the velvet rope to see who had the duty for the day.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, maggot! Next to you worm shit looks like risotto! I bet your mama was a spooge rag…..” Ernie witnessed this assault from below, only hearing and not viewing the action, though as it went on it was easy enough to piece together. “…….Ahhh, Judas Priest! Another one on a full stomach? Alright, you’re okay. Now take your shit soaked panties and get back in line. Alright, who’s next?” The voice seemed familiar, or was it the manner of speech? There was that curt cadence and barking delivery common to USMC drill instructors. He decided to call up to him.

Ah, yes! Kinison had mentioned he planned to add this man to his team. ” At ease Gunny. Carry on!”, and at this Ernie walked on beneath the tube to the back halls leading down, down to the nerve center below. While he tread that darkened path he observed that it did seem notably warmer since Kinison’s tube had been installed. It made him feel much more at ease returning from vacation to see that matters had been well in hand. Hell, Inc. was trending towards a banner year.

Upon rounding the final corner before his office suite he was expecting to find the surly countenance of his secretary, Amy, to greet him. He was instead momentarily startled to find a rather slender and extraordinarily pale man seated in a chair next to his secretary’s desk. The man said not a word, just nodded once rather casually to acknowledge his presence. Ernie stopped in his tracks. He made no response towards the man yet could not remove his eyes from him. The irregularity of it, especially on the first day back from vacation, left him stunned until he decided to check in directly with the boss. He offered a silent and curt nod to this stranger and proceeded on to the Devil’s own office down the hall.

The boss wasn’t normally in this early, but Ernie was certain that he would be today. There would be the debriefing on any developments in his absence. Indeed he did find the Devil reclined at his desk with the morning’s Washington Post clutched before him. With his ever present Cuban wedged into the corner of his mouth he gruffly uttered the question through gritted teeth.

” Boss! What’s with the Albino?”

The Devil looked up casually from his copy of the Post. “Oh him? Don’t worry about it Ernie. I’ve got this one. We’re just keeping him on ice, as it were.” He twisted his face into the most mischievous snarl to accompany his play of irony. He then went on, ” I’ll be taking Mr. Assange back to London Town on the morrow, my good man.”
The Devil had slipped into his best clipped Westminster for the last utterance. This was not a good sign.

Ernie digested this information, made a mental note to look up whatever he could find on this Assange character and then? Stay completely out of whatever was going on. In the English speaking world there are fairly common renderings of the Devil’s image, most of them not too far removed from the truth. Regardless the local dialect there is one aspect of these devilish depictions which seems universal throughout the Anglosphere: the Devil is no more sinister than when he slips into that rather proper Kensington Cluck.

The following morning the Devil, accompanied by a sleepy Mr. Assange, stalked the utter bowels of hell while on their way to an impressive subterranean aerodrome. Assange had managed to maintain a stolid deadpan throughout his stay, but with sight of this even his opaque veneer cracked to reveal a sense of surprise. The Devil adroitly picked up on this subtlety and beaming with pride he effused:

Assange shifted his eyebrows slightly and offered half a nod to silently concede this point. He betrayed nothing more, but he was eager to leave. The Devil, without further remark, led Assange forward into the complex which was surprisingly active for the hour. In relative terms this facility was quite new to Hell; the creation of Howard Hughes, TransHell Airlines (THA for short). The color scheme for it’s predecessor, TWA, was perfectly suited to the new company. This of course had been a concession made to Hughes’ gigantic ego as all craft, once entering the overworld, were entirely invisible to human eyes. Unfortunately this extended to air traffic control technologies as well. On most days flights proceeded from Hell without incident, though for the occasional mid-air collision the cover stories of The Bermuda Triangle and Don Lemmon’s famous black hole theory were sufficient to quiet an incurious populace.

After a stroll about the edges of the space they wandered deeper into the operation until arriving at a hanger where a smaller Learjet was fueled and waiting. The Devil proclaimed that the craft would be their ride for the day and their pilot would be arriving momentarily. It had been no more than five minutes and as promised a corpulent man donned in WWI fighter ace regalia arrived, halted at attention before the Devil and saluted him.

“Guten Morgen, mein Fuhrer! Ve are ready for flug, ja?”

“Yes, good morning Hermann. You have our flight plan?”

“Ja-wohl, mein Fuhrer! It vill be so much fun flying over London again!”

“Hermann? Tell me you’re not carrying any explosives on board!”

“Himmel! Niemals wurde ich….”

“Hermann! Bitte, auf Englisch!”

“No, mein Fuhrer. No explosives on board. I svear on mein nutsack!”

“Good, good. Shall we be off then?”

“Naturlich!”

Assange had stood impassively to one side of this exchange and then as their pilot preceded them up the steps the Devil entreated him to go first.

“Please, go ahead Julian. I may call you Julian?”

“Erm… yes, of course. Er, is that….?”

“Mm-mm? Oh, the pilot? Yes, that’s Hermann Goring. Bit of a putz, really, but he’s a damned good pilot!”

A short time later they had boarded the craft, were situated into their seats and Goring began to taxi from the hangar. Assange was seated just behind the starboard wing, affording him a fair view through the small, oval window out onto the tarmac. Other craft and maintenance vehicles seemed to part way like the smooth ripple of the water’s surface before a ship’s bow. He felt the jet gradually accelerate, gathering momentum steadily when Goring’s voice came across the cabin.

“That’s fine Hermann, just get us there!” The devil offered a wink to Assange, then added “I warned you he was a bit of a putz”.

Assange grinned and again turned his eyes out the window. From as much as he could see forward he could tell that there was a massive movement of some set of doors opening wider and wider. This was spilling an expanding crevice of light, real sunlight, into the subterranean gloom. The wheels were turning faster, faster, the turbine whining to a pitch to make one’s ears ache. The intensity of the sunlight grew, much as one would experience emerging from a long mountain tunnel into a rising sun. The plane bucked at full thrust as they cleared that solid black line where the walls ended, now out and open to the light. Still the tires had not lifted off of the ground. For at least another 700 meters they bumped and rumbled until finally they left the surface. Goring pulled all the way back into an aggressive rate of climb, the g’s pressing ominously. For an instant Assange was certain he felt a hiccup in the thrust; that they were certain for a stall. He mustered a nervous grin and for the first time initiated an exchange with his host.

“Ha ha…yes, I see what you mean about him. He, er….he’s a bit reckless, isn’t he?”

“What? Hermann? Bah, nothing to fear. Look, under the circumstances Julian, I completely understand why you’re nervous about flying and that’s why we’ve made all of these arrangements. I must apologize, I’ve been a bit of an ungracious host. You see at home I’m accustomed to only dealing with the dead. The courtesies of the living are of no consequence here, you understand. You, of course, are one of a very rare set of exceptions and, well, to be completely honest you’ve been so damned quiet I’ve had to wonder a couple of times if you hadn’t died! Quite ironic for a man who’s got himself into his milieu for saying too much, eh? Ha ha! I love irony.”

This was the closest thing to a reassurance Assange had heard from anyone since leaving the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. He wasn’t even certain how long that had been, simply having gone from one confinement to another. It did clear up something for him. Who ever the parties were arranging this travel were not to do him harm: they meant him to arrive safely. This eliminated the Russians from the list and probably the Americans too. Yet they were going to London, where his body double had remained. It also revealed to him that if this did end badly he’d already had a taste of where he was headed. He was pretty sure the Devil might offer him a job.

The flight leveled off as they assumed a cruising altitude and Assange resumed his blase expression, contemplating where this journey might end. If the Devil had any inkling of the arrangements beyond his delivery to London he wasn’t sharing. In his worst imagining he conjured images of his apprehension by a cadre of FBI agents, in cuffs and paraded before all of the cameras before being stuffed into the back of a black SUV and whisked away to a plane that was almost certain to go missing, somewhere over the vast Atlantic Ocean.

Unbeknownst to him, within minutes of that very train of thought, those very events unfolded with his body double in his place. The arrest scene outside of the embassy, cameras from every network across the globe, it was an instant spectacle worldwide. Before this circus his doppelganger was indeed escorted to a large, black government vehicle, driven away in haste to a waiting aircraft which proceeded to explode into billions of pieces somewhere over the Irish Sea approximately 22 minutes after take off. As far as the rest of the world knew the saga of Julian Assange was over. The details could all be sorted later and some suitable narrative would be presented for public consumption. By the time 2020 rolled around people would only say “Julian who?”

At about one hour into their flight the Devil’s Samsung phone chirped a text message. He rolled his eyes in annoyance at first, only taking a cursory glance at the screen to see who it was from. He let the phone settle again into his lap briefly when a troubled expression creased his brow. He took up the phone again to examine it more carefully.

Mildly startled Assange sat up and took the phone. On the screen it read (and he read aloud): change of plans. please call ASAP. Donald.

“Fuck! Nothing is ever simple with this prick! Excuse me a moment, would you? I need to make this call.” The Devil thus excused himself and stepped forward in the cabin, out of earshot.

“Donald! Got your message. What’s wrong?”

“Yeah, hey Satan! Nothing wrong, everything is….oh, hey, did I tell ya we were in England? But everything is okay, really, really okay, you know? I mean did ya see those stock market numbers?”

“Donald! Hold on, hold on. What do you mean were in England? We’re over half way to London!”

“Yeah, yeah…sorry about that. Yeah, it’s just my people here are telling me that the other plane blew up too early, so we’re airborne now. We’ll meet you at the field behind Mount Trumpmore, okay? ”

“Where?”

“Er, uh…you know. Used to be Mount Rushmore? Your field has a gate there, right?”

“Uhh…sure. We took off from there this morning….”

“Okay, great! Great… we’ll meet you there. I gotta go Satan, I got Kim on the other line.” And with this the line went dead.

The Devil sighed silently to himself, turned slightly to check on Assange and then went forward to the flight deck. “Hermann? We gotta turn around.”

At first Goring did not hear him for the earbuds he was wearing. He was rocking out on Thomas Dolby’s One of our submarines. Even a Luftwaffe man can pine for the glory days of their Atlantic Wolf Packs. The Devil realizing this gave him a gentle nudge between the shoulder blades.

“Hermann!”

“Ach! Mein Fuhrer!”

“Hermann, we need to abort. Turn us around, we’re returning to base.”

“Wieso? Was gibts?”

“I’ll explain later, just get us home.”

“Jawohl, mein Fuhrer!”

Before the Devil had finished returning to Assange’s place in the cabin Goring had already begun to execute his turn. An experienced flyer, Assange had already taken note of the change of course and concern grew upon his face as the Devil approached. The Devil, naturally, anticipated questions and held a silencing hand up before him as he took a seat immediately across.

“No cause for alarm, Julian. There has been a sight change of plans. We are returning to base.”

This did little to quiet his anxieties. Assange swallowed hard then dared to ask ” And what then?”

There was no further point in attempting to maintain secrecy. “Julian I know you saw the text so you’ve probably figured most of this out already, but here it is. The President will be meeting us at the aerodrome instead of London as originally planned. There were…well, never mind, that part isn’t important.”

“The President himself?” In his own mind Assange had already begun to turn over whether this could bode good or ill. “…but, why?”

“Oh I shouldn’t worry, Julian! You are to be his guest. In the White House. Apparently you are in possession of some critical information. You don’t really expect he’d send the FBI, do you!? Haven’t you heard…..oh! Yes, I suppose you haven’t, have you? I’d forgotten. In any event you’ve nothing to fear. I love it when the bad actors land on their feet!”

“I’m no bad actor! I’m only interested in revealing the….”

“Yeah, yeah….the truth. I know, I’ve heard your line. Sorry old man, that’s just not a commodity I trade in. I am the Devil, after all!”

The two shared a brief chuckle at this and settled in to relax for the balance of their flight.

As their jet neared their return destination the Devil asked Goring to make a fly by first so they might have a look over the approach. With the President either present or en route there would be a number of aircraft securing the aerial perimeter. As Goring executed the slow bank to the right the Devil had a look outside one of the port side windows. At first he thought he was only projecting the image, but after blinking and refocusing his eyes he saw clearly for the first time what the President had been referring to.

“Sonofabitch! He really did it!”

From the other side of the plane Assange’s interest was piqued. He rose to peer out from the window next to the one the Devil was viewing and was astounded by what he saw. There in the rugged hills some thousands of feet below them stood the familiar profile of rock known as the iconic Mt. Rushmore, but the expected presidential sculptures were gone, obliterated. In their place there now resided three new giant faces peering down from the stone. Actually it was only one face, three times: each an image of President Donald J. Trump in the motif of see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.

The Devil turned to Assange. “Can you believe this guy?”

Incredulous Assange could only stare blankly out the window. “No. No, I can’t.”

“Bah! Pish!You’ve nothing to worry about, Julian. Donald plays a very good host.” The Devil chuckled under his breath. Talk about chutzpah!

Goring finished his long, banking turn and aligned for approach to bay 45. The hands covering the speak no evil face of Trump swung away from the face of the mountain to reveal the gaping maw opened to the field inside. An additional runway extended out from the chasm for the landing, appearing upon the giant face as a tongue being stuck out in a mocking gesture. In fifteen minutes their wheels barked as they made contact with the tongue and reverse thrusters roared to life as they rolled into the mouth, the tongue retracting and hands closing behind them. After another ten or fifteen minutes of taxiing through the complex the plane came to a rest.

Within moments of stopping Goring came trundling back from the flight deck, removing his goggles and unsnapping the chin strap of his leather flight cap. “Ach! Mein Fuhrer, dat vas a lot of fuel for nichts, but your fella ist here.”

“Oh not to worry, Hermann. The US Government will be picking up the tab for this one. Donald is already here? Really?”

“Ja, mein Fuhrer!”

“Alright Hermann. Thank you. You may go on then. Be sure to check in with Ernie for tomorrow’s duty roster.”

Goring clicked his heels and saluted in Nazi fashion then excused himself. The Devil then turned to Assange and gestured towards the exit. “Shall we?”

Assange suffered just a moment of trepidation, just an eyeblink of paralysis, before he mustered a wan smile and arose from his seat. ” Yes. Let’s.”

Once down the steps and onto the floor it was plainly evident that the President was there waiting. Not just because Air Force One sat prominently in the very center of the field, but because the President himself was out on the tarmac, pacing and gesturing furiously to a conversation he was holding on a cell phone.

Kim. Kim. Kim! Will ya listen to me for just a – can I talk now? I think it was my turn to talk now, okay? You’re getting all worked up over nothing, really, really nothing. Oh! Come on now! You believe that? From the failing New York Times….Yeah, yeah, just a moment Kim, okay? Just hang on….

The President paused the conversation for just a moment to acknowledge their presence and held up a finger to signify “just a minute longer” before resuming the phone call.

Kim look, its like I told ya in Singapore, remember? You’re a young man, Kim. You could be ass deep in pussy the rest of your life, right? I mean, come on, look at me, right? All ya gotta do is take care of this Trudeau character for us. Come on! How hard could it be? He’s a Canadian for fucks sake! No. No Kim. The British have got fuck all to do with it. I promise – would I lie to you, Kim?- I promise we’ll leave the Brits completely out of this one,that much I can tell you, okay?

The discussion, in fact, carried on for more than just a few more minutes. From where they stood it was only possible to hear the President’s end of the conversation so it proceeded as a steady stream of unfocused gibberish, seasoned by an occasional utterance which would defy belief. Was he actually plotting with another foreign leader to take out the Canadian Prime Minister?

The silence between them grew awkward after a few minutes, and the Devil really did have other matters to see to. He decided to chart his exit here.

“Well Julian, you’ve made a fine guest, I must say. I’m afraid our part in this is done. I really do wish you the very best and I’m certain you’ll be quite safe at the White House. Of course, in the event that things should not work out for you, well…. I’m sure we can find something for you here. A man of your talents should not be wasted!”

Assange turned his gaze towards the President and wondered just what was in store. Almost absently he replied, “Thanks. I may be back sooner than you think.”